The six-legged robot has four degrees of freedom in each of its
limbs, and can either walk around on tiny metallic feet or screw on
a set of wheels to roll about the environment. He can even
cartwheel, but then he's just showing off.

Using cameras and IR sensors embedded in its knees, Asterisk
avoids collisions, mounts tall steps and ducks under low
objects.

Much like an ant, this six-legged robot can steady itself on just four of its limbs and use the
other two to perform tasks. It can pick up small objects, for
example, and balance them on its hexagon headpiece to carry them
them around.

Its most terrifying applications are apparent when you have a
net or a fence. The robot hooks its tiny feet on the gaps in the
netting to walk up vertical walls and even hang from ceilings. In
the video you can see the nightmare-inducing robospider descend
from above on a wire.

Because it has no distinction between up and down, the robot
will just turn its legs and land safely on its feet. This also
helps it get up more easily if it stumbles.

Asterisk has been in the works for about six years now, and
engineers at the University's Arai Robotics Lab have been kitting
him out with new features every time he's shown off. Its creators
hope that the low-profile robot could one day be used in disaster situations like the recent Japanese earthquake.

Edited by Duncan Geere

Comments

Don't want to sound cynical....but we've been getting insect inspired robots from Japan for freakin' thirty years or more - when are they actually going do something?During their tsunami triggered nuclear disaster I said to a colleague, watch this (!) the Japanese will send in some high-tech robot stuff to clean that place up...but no (!), truck loads of frightened workers with radiation detectors and shovels showed up. Doh!They really went down in my estimation after that.